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In
Nomini Patri
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He was 11-years old and it was Thanksgiving Day when he learned that his
father had moved out.
He was lying on the sofa in the living room reading a paperback book when
his younger brother came in from the backyard, the cold air and smell
of rotting leaves pushing into the warm house as the small boy opened
the back door and ran into the kitchen.
"Mom. Where's dad?"
"Your father isn't here."
"When will he be back?"
"Your father is living with his mother."
"Living with his mother?"
"Your grandmother Murphy."
"When's he going to be back? He'll be here for dinner, right?"
She slammed the cover on a large pot on the stove and the angry noise
made the boy lying on the sofa go stiff. His hands locked on the opened
book, the printed words blurred, and he waited.
But his younger brother knew enough to leave the kitchen. He came into
the living room, turned on the television, turned the volume down low,
then sat up close and stared straight into the flickering screen, his
jacket and shoes still on.
In the kitchen, she slammed covers on pans, threw utensils into the stainless
steel sink and blasted them with hot water.
The boy on the sofa stared into the open book without seeing the words.
He was listening for, waiting for, an opening.
When he heard the folding wood doors of the pantry pushed apart and cans
being shoved around the shelves, he closed the paperback book, got off
the sofa, held the book with both hands tight against his stomach, and
walked fast and quietly out through the kitchen. He made it to the carpeted
stairs and ran as lightly as he could up to his bedroom.
Lying on his bed, he opened the book, and now he could see the words.
He started reading, waiting for the familiar shift, the movement, and
when it came, he let himself go into the far and separate world behind
the words.
The book was not like any other he had ever read. The book explained how—whether
you lived in a city, or, as he did, in a small town with many wooded areas—how
to find, how to select, a special place. The book explained how, if you
went to the right place day after day and sat there quietly, watching
and listening, and maybe sometimes reading or whittling on a stick—eventually,
all the animals living in that place would begin to show themselves to
you. They would accept your presence in that place and you could watch
them scamper through the fallen leaves, run up and down the tree trunks
or flit among the branches.
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This story will appear in Velocity Nine Stories of People In Motion Autumn 2008 Published by Green Flash Publishing |