Two Excerpts

02.26.21

here are brief excerpts from two pieces of fiction i’m writing. both are a work in progress. any feedback is dearly appreciated!

always,

liam

Ora’s Melody
short fiction

A melody rose up in the morning peace. 

They weren’t far, around the bowing hemlock and along the ridge about where the rock was cut old and deep. 

Already, it was bright. Warm. An easy yellow glow touched the crowns of the pines and oak and each rising thing. They heard Ora — heard her good sound, her voice. Listened. In time they rose and started back with a congenital slowness. Lithe, around the hemlock. Up the sloping earth. Stone woven with root like bodied vessels underfoot. 

The cabin was hardy. Proven. Set back beneath the overhanging stone. Shade cooled the walls, obscured the dimensions in dense blue. It was stout. Obsolescent. Wrangled boughs and leaves and rock interceded. The rear sagged. Bulged. Green with blotch-browns and grey spattered the outer lumber. Vaughn tarried on the porch. 

He heard her voice. He stood out front on the steps without gesture. Chin down. Musk about his neck. Listening. From afar he found their noise: the low brushing, the crunch, smooth, from where the ground began to decline. The two appeared like apparitions and he watched them come. Ora sang on with only small breaks of silence. They stopped before the steps. He could smell the light off them. Smell their odor and difference. See the touch upon their cheeks and their bare collars. No one spoke. Each was looking up. To Ora’s sound — to her place above the stone and dirt and canopy. 

Inside, the two settled where the light was best. Beneath a sill. By a door. Vaughn came in. There was the wide beaten chair in the den where he put his head back. 

How about today?

He opened his eyes. The older one, Everett, stood there.

I was thinking we should, Vaughn said. 

Sure. I’d like to.

All right. We’ll go.

Everett moved away. Vaughn closed his eyes in the stillness.

In the dark he saw little. Then deeper: the strange immensity of years. A life. A choked visage. A hint. Nothing straight. The gentle press of this given place with the tall bark pediments and ancient soil. He saw his ancestor — geriatric. The orbital bones. The suffering beard. A man like always. And in the wake of a rooted silence; a broadly forsaken world.

Without opening his eyes he knew Ora was there.

You haven’t eaten, she said.

That’s all right.

You could be dead, sitting there.

Not yet. 

You’ve given up.

No. 

Look at you.

I’m no beauty.

Get up.

There’s no reason just now, is there. I’ll rest a while.

You look like him.

Don’t say that, now. There is sadness you can’t take back.

Quit it. Get up, please. Get up.

——————————————————————————————————————

Animals (UNTITLED)
fiction

Downpour.  

The air was dark. Windless. I stood leaning, head lowered. My skin was damp. Stinging. There was a chorus. Above — the roof pounded. I could smell the wet and the earth and the scattered dusk heat. My heel was twanging; the bone ached. I felt as if I had to shift my feet.

She paid me no mind. Standing there, rooted. Quiet. So quiet.

I remembered an evening: nadir of summer, fringe of the river. Our shoulders were stooped. Stones lined in sober masses; white, dry, grumbling. Shade from the leaves crawled in and hued us blue. Our cheeks burned. Our eyes burned. The flow glittered. I watched her crouch, pushing in her toes. I watched her nape and the burls of her ears — young bone jumping from her back; braid swaying down like a patient limb.

I was imagining things. Shapes wobbling in the dark. Coiling, fluttering like mercurial fabric. How could I say it? I wouldn’t look. And when, at last, she turned her head, I had a palm pressed to my ear.

What about your book?

I turned. The lantern’s glow was weak. Coarse.

Your book, she said. Her voice was low.

I stared.

It’s fine. It’s only wet some.

The wind came like a spasm. Rain misted in, spattered the concrete to my shins. It was difficult to make out how she felt. Lean, bare-shouldered; bronzed by the sun. Standing there, apart. I felt she was baffling. In the fall, the winter, her eyes were clean. Concise. Her body moved in knowing patterns. The cold, it seemed, bore for her a different promise. And autumn pleased her. The deficit of life, the concession of vigor — more the slow ripening of the world, the air, the colour. She had said very little. I understood what I could. Now we were, suddenly and again, summer animals. We brewed our terrors. We bided everything.

I wonder what you write about.

We wonder that each.

She stepped nearer, looking at the rain. 

You’d feel better without pity, she said. 

I’m sure that’s true.

Ahead and away, I saw the dim etching of cabin roofs, the soft, flickering, auric hint of windows. I could say it, I thought. I could say it here. But what would be the use. How, exactly, would it sound.

I tilted my head back. 

Do you remember, I said. 

The words escaped like fresh blood. I inhaled. I held it down. 

She was still. Then she raised a hand out from the eaves and turned it over, turned it back. Rain shattered against her wrist.

That’s not interesting, Laurence.

My eyes fell.

No.

Say it.

I’d like to.

I’m here. I’m listening.

I know.

She waited. 

You treat time like an old trick, she said. Like something we’ve got our hands around.

I don’t do anything like that. How could I?

Say it.

I joined my teeth. My heel whined.

Sometimes, I said.

I heard her steps. I looked. Her eyes were raised. Fixed. Piquant. And the shade of her jaw, like a kerchief, fell dark upon her throat. 

You’d live better without all of this.

I bent forward, turning my hands.

That’s no promise. 

No.

It’s difficult.

I know.

The words are difficult.

Her cheeks smooth. Her eyes like lunar coals. She smiled.

I’ve always found that they were.