Just Before Dawn

by Joshua Hernandez

  A while later he accosts Jim, from across the aisle, at the water fountain. He brings up football, still several months away, because it is the only thing they have in common. Jim manages to brush Drew off, but not before Drew begins to regale him with a tale of high school ball. Drew didn’t play, of course, but he loved to root for his home team. Not long later it’s lunch time. Drew warms up lasagna in the microwave as his co-workers mill around the break room waiting for their turn. The smell of the pasta fills the room with all its goodness and Drew loudly smacks his lips. “My mother made it,” he says slyly to no one in particular. No one is listening, not really, but Drew goes on. “We went over for dinner last night and she had made two pans! Two! That’s almost two more than we all needed!” he laughs. He takes his food from the microwave and sits down with Bret and Donna. They are talking about their car problems, or at least they were. They go silent as Drew begins to eat.

  He looks at them, while still chewing, and says, “Did I tell you my brother is a mechanic? ASE certified and everything! Tell me what’s going on and I’ll pass it along to him, see what he says, you know?” Bret almost scowls but Donna gives in. She begins to tell a tale of misfires and burnt wires. Drew nods all the while, never missing a beat for a good “Really?” or “That’s how it always goes, you know?” They pass their lunch hour this way, talking of cars and not much else. Mostly it’s Drew that talks. People come and people go. Drew doesn’t mind. It’s the talking that’s important.

  Lunch is over and Drew goes back to his desk. He grabs Ben, the guy to his other side, and reels him into a conversation about his T.V. Drew just got one of those big H.D. monsters and Ben has a brother who installs them. Drew asks for advice about how best to hook it up. No matter how many times Ben seems to say, “I don’t know,” Drew just keeps asking.

  Drew doesn’t seem to notice that no one really likes him. Every time he opens his mouth to speak people begin to avoid him. They have grown tired of hearing his stories for every situation. It’s not that they hate him; they just have no use for him. Luckily Drew has his stories to keep him from knowing. It’s better that way. He doesn’t hear when Donna tells Ben, “I wish he would quit or something.” He never sees the way Kathy mimes hanging herself when he talks about his wife. He doesn’t hear what Bret says about “Know-it-all Drew”, about how he wishes Drew would just take his “wonderful” family and drive them off a cliff. They laugh at Drew behind his back. They tell stories about him, mocking his tales with school yard bully glee.

  Drew doesn’t know a thing about those people. Instead, he just tells his friends stories.

  At the end of the day, when everyone is packing up, Drew says his goodbyes. He is ready to leave before everyone else. Most people would assume he was a work-a-holic, but everyone at M,D&D knows the truth: If Drew had any vices at all it would be that he could not be apart from his family. He catches Martha at the desk and gives her a smile. She smiles back and pretends to be on the phone. Drew nods his goodbye and gives her a thumb’s up. Martha quickly looks down so he can’t see her fake a gag.

  Drew says goodbye to Mike after his ride on the elevator, finds his car where it always is, and readies himself to go home. It is a short drive but traffic makes it last much longer. Drew sings along with the radio. It’s Journey, “Don’t Stop Believin’”. After a few seconds Drew realizes he forgot the words and is embarrassed. During the next song, “Tiny Dancer”, he sings twice as loud as if to make up for his mistake. Drew enjoys the ride home. He always does.

  Drew pulls up to his building just after 5:45 p.m. The door has barely closed behind him and he is already smiling at the doorman, wishing him a good night. He doesn’t stop to talk tonight. As the doorman, Frank, knows already, Thursday is movie night at Adams’ place. Drew has made this clear many a time. Drew waits for his elevator and, as it finally arrives, Drew lets out a held breath. He gets on, the doors close and Drew’s smile fades for the first time today. He takes off his glasses and rubs at the bridge of his knows. “I’m getting just like dad,” he mutters, and the thought makes him chuckle a bit.

  Once off the elevator Drew makes quick work of the thirty five paces to his door. This distance he has counted. Many times. He opens his door and makes a beeline for the bathroom just off the entrance hall. He goes in, whistling, and changes into his evening gear of gym shorts, a tee shirt and socks. He wipes down his arms and legs with a rag, carefully going over the criss-crossed, hamburger meat pattern scars on his right side that once marked a bad burn. Their story, the scars’, he has never told his friends.

  He walks out into the hall, smiling once more. He ignores the pictures that are scattered all over his apartment or are mounted on the wall. He used to look at them but hasn’t in a very long time. In fact, every single one of them faces inward, only the cardboard backing showing through the glass in the frame. It doesn’t matter. Drew has them memorized.

  “I’m home!” he calls out.

  “How was your day, dear?” a voice, only slightly feminine, replies.

  “Good,” he said, “talked to my friends a bit but they didn’t seem too interested. Thursday blues, you know!” Drew laughs. He turns and says, “Hey Jack, a girl at work is having car problems.”

  “Oh yeah?” a voice replies, “What kind?”

  Drew begins to talk, and as he does he walks around his apartment, empty save for himself, telling the story of his day. He tells of his friends to his family. They don’t roll their eyes or pretend to be doing something else. They listen attentively as Drew looks through his movies for something to watch. Each one answers in turn, their voices coming from Drew’s mouth so smoothly that it is almost like magic. Drew laughs with them, preparing their empty chairs for movie night. He cooks four bags of popcorn and sits the bowls down. Drew tells himself in his mother’s voice that she doesn’t want popcorn. Drew gives her spot the bowl anyway. Tonight, no one will eat the popcorn but Drew, exactly like every other night.

  But there has to be popcorn, thinks Drew. After all, it’s movie night.

  The Existing of John Brown

  It was almost as if the water was playing with him. He stood staring at his reflection in the ankle deep water as it lapped against the skin of his calves before enigmatically pulling away, daring him to follow. It was a game he had played before with her, he called the lake “her” when referring to it when alone, but it was still one that held endless wonder for him. Back the water came, a gentle swell that grazed his knee caps with a tickling chill that threatened to make his knees weak. It was the not-quite-so overcast weather that often let the sun peek out from behind its cumulus clothing to brighten the day enough to see by before disappearing in shades of gray once more. It was during one of these intervals, now to be exact, that he could see himself in the shimmering mirror at his ankles. His face was barely discernible on the fluctuating surface of the water; his toes wiggled behind his ears and eyes and he wasn’t quite sure that he had meant to do so. A beard covered his jaw and cheeks, his lips almost nonexistent under the wiry fur he had grown over the (how many had it been?) weeks. His face seemed pale; as pale as it could look in a reflective surface based on the clarity of the water and the brightness of the day, but he was sure it really was quite pale. He rose a hand up to brush at the tangle of hair that had fallen across his brow and was amazed to see the puckering-pink skin of scar tissue horizontal on his forehead. When had that happened? Still, his eyes were the same uninteresting brown of always, and that was at least minutely reassuring.

  The water came back in, wiping away his reflection, and he smiled at the game of it. A nagging part of his mind told him it was time to go back. He ignored it. Rationality didn’t seem as important as it used to. There was a time he would have been appalled to see himself wading in the oft times murky water of the lake; suits of the tailored kind did not do well with pond scum and mud. So, instead of going back where he might find lunch or breakfast-just-before-noon, he sat down with a splash. Cold, refreshing water
sprayed around him in clear droplets that fell upon all the parts of him that were not already submerged from his navel down. Another of the lake’s playful surges came back just then and soaked him all the way to just under his chin. He didn’t mind. She liked to play games with him like that. It was just who she was.

  A breeze was blowing from across the lake towards him with a good enough punch to it that he began to shiver a bit. He laughed as he pictured his ragged self as he would have been seen by some imaginary vacationer on the beach, or perhaps on a little boat with a rod and reel. How he must look, sitting in the water, and now laughing fit to split, like some kind of overgrown, shaggy child. A vague feeling of sorrow hit him at the same time; laughing was quickly overcome by shallow heaves. Though he didn’t know it, tears were cutting clean swaths through the accumulated grit on his face. A name, a face, drifted so quickly through his thoughts that even his emotions were stunned. He could not place either, and part of him wondered why. The other part cried all the harder. Suddenly the lake sickened him. He looked out across its billowing surface and felt an unbelievable swelling of rage building up in his gut. He wanted to spit and curse and cuss and fight and tear at the surface of the water until ever last bit of it was gone. “You bitch,” he spat at her (she was always her to him, even when he was mad) as he stood and turned around. He walked out of the shallows towards the cabin just beyond the brief stretch of scrub and sand. Before he reached it he had already forgotten he had been mad.

  The toast was stale; an impressive feat for bread that had already been cooked and dehydrated. He wondered if it was really the toast that had gone bad; perhaps his tongue had simply soured. Or worse. It could have decided to rebel all together, a feat his mother had spoken of many times in the past. When was the last time he had tasted anything? Another, more upsetting, question wormed its way into the fore. When was the last time he had spoken? He thought he had down by the water, but couldn’t be sure. He knew he had once thought he was on fire and had rolled on the ground outside the cabin until his skin was raw. Someone had helped him then. He didn’t think that person had been around in a while. He looked at the toast in his hand as if expecting it to run away. “Toast,” he blurted. His mind immediately stopped worrying and he felt the tension melt away. He could still talk. Good. His tongue wasn’t his problem after all: the toast was simply stale. He looked around the cabin and felt a familiar comfort, coupled with a brief bout of anxiety, wash through him. There was the plaid couch of oranges and brown, covered with that ugly green afghan over the back. There was the coffee table with three legs, the fourth being an old piece of wood that had been too hard to chop up for the fire. Across from the couch, where a T.V. would have been in any other house, was the book-shelf that took up the entire wall. He was quite proud of his books, even though they weren’t properly his. He was just taking care of them for someone else. He thought. Things just sometimes got confusing. He never dwelled on it long though; there was always something else to take up his attention.

  As he turned towards the kitchen (the whole of the bottom floor was opened up to all walls; kitchen, dining, living and a small alcove all open to view from any point in the room) he caught sight of a bowl of fruit on the table. He walked over to the table and plucked an apple from the top of the pile. He bit into it and tasted the sour-sweet of the Granny Smith all up and down his tongue. The ate the apple ravenously after that, following it with two more of the large green apples, an orange, and a whole bunch of bananas. He did this all while standing motionless by the table. It had never occurred to him to sit, nor did it seem likely to happen. He looked around the room again as he savored the last bite of banana, hoping to see another surprise. He got one. A large yellow page from a legal pad was on the indoor side of his front door. He walked over to it and plucked it from the dark wooden portal, holding it close to his eyes to read it. It said:

  “Dear Mr. Brown,

  I’ve collected your laundry for the week, stocked your cupboards and your icebox and cleaned up a bit. There’s dinner on the counter and four ready-made meals in the box. You were sleeping when I came and didn’t seem fit to wake, so I was careful not to. See you next Friday. We’re praying for you.

  Sarah Wilkins”

  He frowned. Who was Sarah Wilkins? He read the note again and saw that there was a small post script on the bottom quarter of the page, scribbled in the quick chicken scratch of an almost forgotten afterthought:

  “P.S.

  Dean says there still hasn’t been any calls. We’re real sorry.”

  Now he really was concerned. What calls had he been expecting? Perhaps this Sarah Wilkins had gotten the wrong house, but he quickly dismissed the thought. The fruit was new and now that he thought on it he could smell something that he was sure was pot roast coming from a small covered parcel on the counter. Sarah. That name sounded, and felt, familiar. Still, he could not place it. The smell of pot roast drew him away from his thoughts and he went to the counter and opened the parcel. Pot roast. He ate until he was full and fell asleep on the floor of the kitchen.

  The water seemed to be playing with him again. This morning, however, he was not playing back. He had not remembered going to sleep last night, getting dressed this morning or even eating the food he had thrown up into the water when he realized his last good thoughts were about the yellow paper yesterday. If it had really been yesterday. He wasn’t so sure anymore. He frowned as he kicked at the water, watching the darkening spots as the liquid weighed down his khaki shorts. It was completely overcast today; the sky was the universal gray of a primered old truck, and the wind just as fragrant. There was something bugging him, and he couldn’t remember what it was. The sad part of this was that this was the clearest he had though in perhaps weeks, and yet he had no idea what it was about. He knew there was a problem. He knew that he was sleeping much more than normal and that he was forgetting, or repressing, a lot of information. He closed his eyes and squeezed every muscle in his body, holding his eyes so tightly shut that he began to see red spots in the darkness of his eyelids. A flash of a suit, a bed and the sound of bells filled his desperate memory before fading in the flotsam of lost thoughts that were his mind. He lost his balance and fell backwards into the water. His breath shot out from his lungs as he hit a rock he hadn’t known was there, and suddenly the water rushed over him.

  He panicked for a moment, thrashing about under the cold surface until he realized his nose was touching dirt as he practically crawled on his hands and knees. He shot up out of the water like a bullet. He cried tears that were hidden by lake water. Fear, sorrow and frustration poured out of him quicker than the water had swallowed him up, and within seconds he could barely catch his breath.

  A bird cried out so near to him that it stunned him into silence. He turned and saw a magnificent bird wading in the shallows. He had never seen one like it except in pictures and television. It was almost his height, far larger than he felt it should have been, and was stark white for most of its body. Its wings ended in black feathers and its neck and legs were also black. Its head was white once more, its eyes were now turned towards him and observing him far more astutely than he felt it should have been, except for a patch of bright red that covered its crown. It was beautiful beyond anything he had imagined before. He sat in the water and watched it as it walked towards him, its head bobbing as it came forward.

  It stopped a few feet away from where he sat.

  “I’m John,” he blurted. The bird cocked its head to the side. It remained silent. “John Brown,” he offered as if that would make any differences. His mind screamed at him that he was being irrational, but he could have sworn the bird nodded when he said his whole name. “I know John Brown isn’t exactly most unique name in the world, but it’s the only one I’ve got. You know?” Of course it didn’t John thought, but at least it didn’t fly away. That was something. And then John began to talk. “I think I’m lost in my own mind, if that’s possible. I can’t remember anything, and I k
now there is something I desperately want to remember. There are people, right there,” he said, motioning to his side with a frantic gesture as he stood, “that I just can’t see no matter how hard I try. I…I’m scared.”

  The bird, uncaring, backed up a step, hopped a couple of times forward, and launched itself into the sky. John hung his head and cried.

  He woke up screaming. There were faces and names screaming at him to be remembered, but as quickly as they came they were fading. He tried to stutter out the names, but as soon as his tongue figured out how to make the sounds (Karen…Tia…Johnny…) they faded and danced away. He looked out the window and saw it was night. The moon was a great silver orb over the lake. She was once again swelling back and forth in the wind, so he got up and opened the window. The sound of it all rushing in was like a choir of angels to one lost, lonely soul that had forgotten god. He sank down under the window sill and held onto his knees. He didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

  He ran naked into the water. He was screaming; that much was real, but he couldn’t tell if the fire dancing up and down his arms and legs was. It burned like fire and his mind accepted it as real, but how could it not be going out as he submerged his body into the cold water of the lake? She had always helped him before, why not now? He dunked himself repeatedly into the water until he was sure he had never known anything but burning skin and being cold at the same time. He finally couldn’t take it anymore and ran up towards the shore, still screaming. He closed his eyes as he ran; hoping that perhaps he would run off the face of the world and his troubles would then be gone. He opened them just in time to see a large white shape lunging at him. It hit him square on the chest, surprisingly much lighter than he had expected, and knocked him to the mud. He rolled onto his stomach quickly and turned towards the shape. All ideas of fire and pain had been forgotten as he stared at the bird once more. He knew it was the same one: how could there be two of these magnificent creatures in the entire world? No. It was the same one.