Something to Remember by Alexey Adonin
Like Some Idiot Love Song
It wasn’t quite the way he moved, sitting there across from her in one of those chairs with the iron grilled backs. His legs were stretched out across the porch—one ankle bridged over the other—toes curling stiffly under the leather. The woman stared at his boots in the lamp lit darkness that lay on them like words wanting to be said.
No, it wasn’t the way he moved, and she knew this when he fumbled in his jacket pocket and took out his tobacco and with the fingers of his only hand rolled some up in a paper between his thumb and index finger. It was deft and he was quick, but her heart was slow and she realized that.
No, she said and looked out into east Texas under the sprawled pecan tree down by the road.
There was a fury of red where the sun was slipping down like she had just opened up a shotgun into the heart of the matter. He put the cigarette into his mouth and wrapped a figure eight around the plastic bag where he kept his tobacco and put it back into his jacket.
No, I don’t think so.
The zippo flicked up into his cigarette and the woman saw his white goatee in the shriveled light, sliding down around the edges of his face.
Okay.
The smoke came out of his mouth before the word and after.
There was a silence until he shifted his feet closer to him and leaned forward so that his elbows rested on his knees. He wound his head toward her under a plume of smoke coiled like some dissolute halo.
Are you happy, he said.
The sky was blurry down by the horizon like someone had smeared the blood around—all over the peach fraught sky. The whippoorwill cried over on the creek. Her rocking chair whined in front of the porch railing. It was only a matter of time before she would have to prune the lilac that scrambled up the bannisters.
Angel.
She looked down and the tabby rolled her head against the woman’s calf through the skirt and crooked her tail toward her.
Yes, she said.
She tried to look at him but her eyes ended up past the greying hair, time formed by the Stetson hanging next to his shoulder. The woman heard the bird again down in the creek and thought of it for a moment singing darkly on the smilac vine and she looked quickly back at the man—at his arm that wasn’t there—tied up under his shirt above the elbow—the knot messy—the corners stained with habit.
She could handle the infant. The thought of it gone at least—all these years. The woman knew that’s why he’d come. Some unsaid token of allegiance—some formless duty. She could see it around his eyes if she dared to look. That word never made flesh. A fanatic gust of flame in the night—that infant—born out of toil and pain—a last effort wrenched out of the marriage bearing words on its tongue under its breath as they lay together in their bed those early days. Saying—deliverance—birth—and the unspeakable dream—family. The woman’s hands trembled. She clutched the worn edges of the rocker arms as if they were used to it. The two figures sat there on the porch, looking out over the mute Abruzzi rye—united again in the darkness by a stillborn thought.
When he touched her on the arm the woman started and a shiver ran through her body.
She looked out over the rain blown bottom lands. A wisp of cloud hung faintly down by the horizon, wet with lavender from the sunset. The woman wondered about his arm and did not ask him what had happened to it. She thought of the arm—perhaps carried away at a hospital in France with the shrapnel still in it—carried away in a bag and buried like a little body. The man touched her again on the arm and the little piece of her heart that was still there was drumming wildly away.
Yes, I’m happy.
The cloud on the edge of the field was shining. Like an apparition it drifted—like a tabernacled spirit in the desert of the evening. What was left in her heart seemed to be caught up with him—a life apart in the night—so that no words came out and her throat was dry. Her breath was halting through her mouth like the fly in the spider web above her in the porch balustrade spinning its wings violently in the webbing. The woman couldn’t stop looking at it.
Angel, he said hoarsely and she could hear that his eyes were wet as they watched her. The ash rolled off his cigarette leaving a smolder clenched between his knuckles.
It wasn’t quite in how he moved—that awful feeling she had—as he shifted there uncomfortably on the hard seat of his chair—one hip always angled up a little higher than the other. He could have lost most of it when the screen door slammed behind him that last hopeless time or it could have been cut out with the other pieces of his arm in France or maybe he still carried most of her heart around in his back pocket with his cigarette papers above the jerking hip. Above the angular lope. No, it wasn’t in the way he moved—that always part. It was different. That regressive forever. That retardation. The cloud was fading into the horizon—into some known future and she watched it go.
She could still remember what that feeling looked like in the early days and—sitting there in the dark—an effigy from some unimaginable past—the woman traced the words on her skirt like a hen scratching for beetles in the dirt. I love you.
About the author:
My name is Andrew Rea. I am a writer and vegetable farmer living in Portland, Oregon. I enjoy writing poetry and stories, both short and long. I received my degree in Humanities and Philosophy, and have been thriving as a farmer for the last decade.
In the artist’s words:
An abstract-surrealist artist, Alexey Adonin has dedicated over one and a half-decade to convey his vision of hidden otherworldly realms. Alexey believes that art is not only a way to express ourselves but also a unique key to unlocking the knowledge of the hidden world. In his creative endeavor, he tries to apply a more philosophical approach and to hint at the mystical origin of all things. Alexey mostly strives to get away from banal copying of reality, preferring instead to create one of his own—something that somehow reflects his inner world.