rickroyal

I'm walking in the rut my father made in the field where blueberries once grew. The sun, an angry, red slash against the sky; even in spring the wind has teeth, biting my bare arms. My left heel burns as the slightly too tight boot pinches it with every step; in the morning, when I'd slipped them on, I'd marvelled at the way the leather felt cool and slick even through my socks.

Behind me, squatting on crumbling foundations, is the house. It knows what we are doing to it: gutting it. Amputating its diseased parts and replacing them with new ones that gleam. Only the shell will be left when my father finally finishes, and he'll hide that away from the world, too.

My uncle, the barber who always interrogated the sibs and me when we were little about "swappin' spit" with other kids, had advised that the house be destroyed; remove it and its roots like the rotten tooth it is and start from scratch. He advised this, standing in the three foot space between where his father collapsed on the floor and where his mother gave up the ghost to follow him ten years later.

In the rut, I think about the house behind me that seems to be trying to kill us with its broken bits that come off like booby-traps, about the county men who will pick through the trash when we bring it as if it's booty to divide, about the woman on strings who makes the screams so hard to control, about the Italian Girl laughing and wiping her face after the errant shot, about the sibs and the rutless paths they're taking, about the silent dinner that waits at home. When not dulling the mind, it sets it ablaze.