Hold the Light

by Ryan Sherwood

  It was strange to me that a man the same age as me had his life figured out. He knew what he wanted for himself and was only at college for the fun of it. Or so he said. But that was his business and I never worried about it. Sarcastically, Randy said he was well off, and that was the only thing that he told me about himself that I didn't have trouble believing.

  I think Randy was about the same age as me but I was never sure. I never felt like asking him, I just assumed, it just never seemed that important.

  We became the best of friends and that was what was important.

  Chapter 31

  We lived in a time I liked to call the Syntax Era, in which the computer language spilled off all our tongues. Abbreviations, acronyms, and all kinds of slang came out of our mouths but Randy, on the other hand, was a straight talker. He never used cliches or talked like a computer nerd. Nothing that resembled less than perfect English came from his mouth and that was the way he liked it. Erudite like the people of years past, he seemed out of place in the late twentieth century.

  Whatever he hid about his past was wrapped up so tightly in his mannerisms that even air couldn't enter or escape. No man I had ever known was able to outrun his past, except Randy, it appeared. I have seen him as sober as a nun and drunk as a wino, but he always appeared genteel. I also understood that some things he might have left for the right time to tell me. So I waited.

  There were times when something would haunt him with convulsive shivers, as a distant look seized him. I would see him suck into those moods most often when college let out for vacations or holidays and Randy would come home with me.

  As I drove us home, many miles outside the city, we'd pass through a small town that was surrounded by nothing much else than grasslands. Waves of eternal green as far out as the horizon. Randy would stare out the window, never allowing a thing to break his concentration.

  With my driving, the world sped past the window in streaks of yellow and green, but he always watched one house pensively. The shack he eyed was meekly carved out of the massive overgrowth, floating like driftwood in a green sea. His head remained fixed on the decrepit house as we passed it, following it with his eyes until it disappeared.

  On the last trip home, right before my mother's funeral, Randy spoke up before we reached the rickety old house.

  "Would you stop at that house for me?"

  "What is it Randy? Why do you look at it?"

  "Please, could you just stop there?"

  I pulled up and parked under the lone maple tree planted in the center of the yard. The lot reeked of abandonment but the air smelled clean and crisp. The front of the house drooped like a sullen brow. The only thing that held the porch upright it seemed was the house's resolve. The foot-high grass was patchy and somewhat dry, growing out in small colonies within the gravel driveway. The shingles had rained off the roof into small piles around the house and the chipped brown paint might as well have been the only load bearing support left, but the dilapidation was no deterrent.

  Randy stepped in and walked with care. I watched him, from the distance, pass the large picture window before I followed him inside. Everything in the house creaked even when we weren't walking. Low moans came from the floorboards and ceilings as Randy glided his fingers across the abandoned furniture. With sealed lips and enthralled eyes, Randy had some esoteric conversation with the walls. They comforted him with some all-encompassing feeling from his past. I felt bad for him as he wandered the place. He looked as lost as the old, broken-down house.

  "What do you see in this dump?" I asked Randy.

  His hands ran along the wall and paint crumbled off. He poked a finger at a drawer and it fell. Everything he handled broke. I kept my hands to myself.

  We passed carefully through the kitchen to the back door. Randy pushed the white door open revealing acres of land. Below a vast sky, there was green and inviting grass all about. Scattered ruins of an old barn sat like a lump in the distance but it was no more than a skeleton. Randy held onto the doorknob as I sneaked past him, off the small porch, damn near tripping on an old rusting tricycle.

  "Why did we stop here?" I asked wanting to leave before the house caved in or some locals showed up.

  Randy was about to speak when the doorknob rattled in his hand and his face clouded over. His eyes were as clear as stone. He stood there for a moment then snapped awake and looked at me.

  Towering black clouds dropped from the heavens and a storm rolled in. Thin strips of lightning shot from the gloom and quickly beheaded the peaceful sky. The day went from pure blue to ominous black very quickly.

  We both stood on the porch and watched. I glanced over at Randy for a brief second and looked back again. His jaw had dropped and his eyes were wide. I looked out into the field to where he was fixated but there was nothing but oncoming rain. The static charge in the air tickled my hair. I began to worry.

  Another flash of lightning flared and I finally saw what he saw. As the heavens dumped rain miles away in heavy sheets, the lightning showed us a silhouette. I had to rub my eyes. I looked back at Randy, but he didn't budge an inch. Thunder followed and I jumped with the noise, losing the silhouette, half-believing I never even saw it in the first place. The lightning picked up in intensity and with each burst, I could see the shadowy figure again. And each time it came closer. I couldn't distinguish any features on the face. The sky was as dark as it could be. The ghostly person floated our way without moving a leg, gracefully gliding along the emerald grass. Another flash of light revealed long hair curling in the wind. She was dark no matter how much light was produced, and didn't look real. She appeared more like a pencil drawing.

  Flashes rapidly multiplied and the silhouette came even closer. I was scared stiff. The lightning created a strobe effect on the woman and it entangled me completely as I watched her features appear. She had come within thirty feet of us.

  She was strangely beautiful, macabre with a dark serenity. I wanted to say something but the air around me was still and wouldn't move into my lungs. Pure like a memory, as if the atmosphere was my skin extended for a moment, I felt like the electric charge of the storm under my skin. The charge activated my senses and I inhaled. The air smuggled panic back inside of me and I was poised to run. Fear warned me that the approaching woman was a ghost and my common sense screamed it wasn't worth staying there to find out. My arm darted out and pulled on Randy. Trying to move him was like towing tons. I pleaded and yelled for him to move, but he barely swayed. The dulcet figure, enchanting Randy, closed to within fifteen feet when I sent a kick to the back of his knee. His weight stuttered and I caught him.

  "Let's go," I barked as I dragged him away.

  "But ...it's her," he pleaded, reaching out for her.

  With my hands locked around his chest, I pulled his body as I walked backwards around the outside of the house like a mother pulling her kid through a toy store.

  "We need to go back now. We need to," Randy said hysterically as I lugged him towards the car. He had no strength to fight me.

  "I don't care," I mumbled tossing him into my passenger side. I slammed the door and the clouds let the rain loose as I drove off into the downpour.

  On the entire drive home, he never looked anywhere but back and out the window.

  Chapter 32

  When we got home, my mother was ailing. Her face was ineffable. I prayed she'd make some show of emotion or at least crack a smile at dinner, but her eyes were glazed and her face was pale. I hoped she would fill with vigor after a night of sleep, but at breakfast she carried her tiny body awkwardly, limbs pendant as she struggled to raise a spoon to her thin lips.

  "You boys headin' back soon?" she asked with the slightest smile.

  Randy cracked his traditional smirk whenever she called us boys.

  I spoke quickly, "No, Mom. I wanna stay with you."

  "Yes, we would love to stay in your company," Randy added.

  "Absolutely not boys, I won't have it," she said with the o
nly fervor she showed our whole visit.

  "Mom wait ..."

  "I said no, dammit," she raised her voice, "You need to do well and not worry about me. I'm the mom. I'm supposed to worry about you, not the other way around."

  I stood and took our plates to the kitchen as Randy and she talked. I returned and we talked for a couple of hours then left, on schedule but off kilter. The last thing I wanted to do is leave her alone at home but it was worse to get her all riled up. My goodbyes to my mother were long and emotional. We drove halfway home in silence as Randy pondered and I worried. I couldn't stand the quiet for long so I broke the silence.

  "Randy?"

  "What?"

  "What about your family?"

  "What about them?"

  "Exactly. I don't know anything."

  "I have a sister named Betsy."

  "How old?" I asked with an excitement that I was actually getting some information.

  "She is the youngest, but she is getting so old."

  "Where's your family at Randy?"

  "Around here."

  "Well let's visit them," I said cheerfully, "I wanna meet them."

  His lips pursed and a trembling hand covered his mouth. "All of them but Betsy are dead," he stated coldly and reluctantly.

  I stopped questioning. Thoughts of my mother dying flooded into my mind and I could barely hold in the tears. The last thing I wanted to do was remind Randy of his losses. Angry images of my father popped into my head. I cursed him and drove on in silence.

  Chapter 33

  On an unseasonably warm spring morning, a day and a half after I visited home, I woke to the ringing of the phone. The sun heated my bedroom as I crossed in front of the window. I cleared my eyes and groggily answered.

  "Boy," an effeminate voice said. I needed a couple of seconds to realize it was my mom's brother, Uncle Bill.

  "Yeah," I answered still half asleep.

  "Boy, I don't know how to tell you this..." he said sibilantly.

  His lisp always annoyed me. As he spoke, I could see his fat jowls bouncing with his labored speech. Corpulent everywhere, his breathing was heavy in person but much more arduous over the phone. In all my experiences Bill came around for only one thing, money, but there was something genuinely turbulent humming deep within his throat, alerting me to a real problem.

  "Your ma, her sickness yeah, well ...she's not gonna make it," Uncle Bill's voice crept with a sob, "Come home now."

  I hung up immediately, told Randy and we both left.

  The drive was dead silent. Randy seemed jittery.

  We arrived at my mom's house late. Cars lined the driveway and people lined the hallway. I could see it in all of my relatives' eyes that my mother had died before a word was spoken. Amber had found her lying in her bed, quiet and still, just an hour or so before I arrived. I went straight into my old room and spoke to no-one. I didn't want to mourn or cry; I just wanted to sit. People came into my old room and asked me questions. I could see their lips moving, but I understood nothing. All I realized was that Randy was sitting on the bed next to me. My brain cataloged not a single shred of input until the day of her wake.

  On that day, my senses devoured every detail. Amber, Randy, and I sat in the front row of seats at the funeral home. Rows and rows of relatives filled the space behind us. There were so many huge bouquets of flowers arranged around the casket that the room's white paint had no choice but to reflect all the reds and yellows. It was so bright it hurt. Tears stung my dry eyes. Saturnine pats on my shoulders expressed condolences as people walked by; they shook their heads and then visited the casket. But nothing blocked the red and yellow shine. The bouquet conflagration drove tears down my cheeks then the heat on my face evaporated them just as quickly. Sweat beaded along my brow and down my collar, while yet more relatives' added new floral arrangements to fuel the fire. The heat forced more perspiration down the small of my back.

  Ready to burst into flames, I fled outside to cool down. Out in the open air, I pulled out a pack of cigarettes. My eyes cooled down quickly and I was relieved. Leaning against a support beam, I lit a cigarette. The damp, cool air tickled my pours as I puffed. Smoke in my eyes was better than tears. I was at peace for the moment. That tranquility collapsed when my sister burst out the doors. She swung the double doors open so hard they almost hit me. She was furious. I felt more heat secreting from her than there was inside. Just like her damned father.

  "What're you doingm George?" she hissed, looking for a reason to explode.

  "Um, what's it look like I'm doing?" I wanted to push her buttons. She never cared about Mother. The only good thing Mom did, according to Amber, was marry Dad.

  "Get in there dammit, people are talking," she ordered.

  "Tell them to fuck off."

  "Dammit, George!" She blew up with a shocked look. "Don't embarrass me here you prick!

  Show some respect."

  "I am. I actually loved her."

  Her cheeks ballooned into a violent crimson. Insults rushed to her conceited little head. She prepared to retaliate, but quickly kept them to herself out of fear of embarrassment.

  "You know, sis," I posed, "What do you believe?"

  "What? What the hell are you talking about?" All her anger drained into confusion. Her short temper pulsed behind her eyes.

  "What do you believe, Amber? Do you think she's in Heaven?"

  "Um, yeah, sure she's in Heaven," she guessed as I tapped away ashes.

  "Why do you think she's there?" I had no idea where I was going with my questions, but I just wanted to press all her buttons. She reluctantly pondered my questions and I waited for her to respond venomously.

  "I hope she is, I know she is," Amber said triumphantly.

  "You know she's there?"

  "I hope she's there," she amended, following my lead.

  "And what do you think Mom hoped for, sis?"

  "What ...why? Huh? Where are you going with this? Tell me if you're so smart."

  I leaned right into her face with my cigarette hanging out the corner of my mouth. The smoke made a thin, translucent shield between our faces and she squinted from the sting of the smog. She deserved this. My actions weren't venial, but the way she treated Mother...

  "She got just what she hoped for. She escaped."

  My sister's face sunk and she covered her mouth. I strolled out from underneath the canopy into the light rain, satisfied with my affront. She followed, hair draping into her face.

  "Are you saying she committed ..." She gasped.

  "No you idiot, she waited for her time," I interrupted. "You would think that."

  "What the fuck are you saying, George?"

  "You wouldn't know, would you?" I took another drag of my cigarette. "It's in your eyes, Amber, but you can't see it. You never cared. You'd rather see what suits you and not what's in front of you."

  "How dare you. Aaargh. Asshole!" She yelled through her tears, "She was my mother too, damn you."

  "How about Dad? You hope for him, too?"

  "Leave him alone, you deranged freak." She whimpered.

  I blew my smoke at her.

  "It's your damn eyes again. Man, what it must be like to be you," I dug in on her. "You never knew him, Amber. He was nowhere near the idol you make him out to be."

  "You're the one who left. You ran. I stayed. I may have been young but I remember that he was a better man than you'll ever be ...and that's what drove you away. You were jealous. You were the bad one."

  I quickly grew sick of her. She wouldn't swallow the truth even if I forced it down. The rain began to fall harder and I enjoyed it. Water ran down my forehead and I stared at my feet, and then lifted my eyes to hers.

  "Believe what you want sis," I said plainly. "But people are like clouds. If you look at them hard enough, you can see anything."

  I turned my back on her and she cried. I crushed out my cigarette. Randy came out and she pushed past him as she ran back inside.

  "You sure are g
ood at that, George," Randy said watching her run.

  "You want one?" I offered him a cigarette as I lit another.

  "Yes," he said looking at my feet.

  Randy looked more ravaged by depression than I felt. Under the awning, he puffed on his cigarette and watched me stand in the rain. The smoke encased his head, circling like a crystalline ghost, until the smog whisked off into the breeze. He bent his head into the wind and it blew by like an elusive memory. Stepping out into the drizzle, he let the rain patter off his trench coat and avoided eye contact with me. Sulking like he would burst if our eyes met, our moods blended into the misty rainfall.