Close to Me {Chazza}
Jul 2, 2012 11:12:39 GMT -5
Post by kneedles on Jul 2, 2012 11:12:39 GMT -5
Some days in the summer everything in district ten is perfect and time slows down. And some days it feels as though time has stopped altogether. The sky becomes an ocean, so vast and brilliant that Scutcher can’t help but stop everything he’s doing- pull himself away from weeding, from mucking out pig sties – and just stare up at it. The lavender in the garden is bright and the cicadas screech from their places nestled within long dry grass, heat stilling the air, heavy and sweet with the scent of flowers fresh and in bloom.
Scutcher can try and shut his eyes and tell himself that today is one of those days- Noreen catches him unaware drifting off to sleep in the garden, and when he wakes he stares at her so hard that her features begin to blur like fading memories. Like this, she says softly, brushing her fingertips along the surface of his palm, bending his fingers and threading them together into the earth. The weeds come away easy, barely taking root. Tallow is there and she’s laughing like the still, warm air is all hers, comes to sit to his left while Noreen stays on his right. Or like this, Tallow smiles and knots his free hand in hers. He is content, both hands full while the wind kicks up the dandelion fluff and sends it careening through the air and the world has stopped. The beauty and calm of this perfect afternoon will never end.
But he can’t lie to himself.
There are no flowers to fill the air with sweetness, only the metallic tang of blood and the sounds of rocks flying as Tallow’s friend leads him away, his sister’s rough kiss still stinging his mouth.
Where is she? Scutcher wants to ask, stumbling across paths, dragged along as though caught on a strong current. But she encapsulates so much; Tallow, Noreen, the smell of lavender and the lazy days of summer when time slowed right down and everything felt…if not good…then okay at the very least. But she is gone and Scutcher let them take her, walked away from her because he was afraid, let her get swallowed up in a crowd baying for blood.
He hates crowds at the best of times, but that one in the district square felt about ready to swallow up the entire world. Swallowed up Tallow and then didn’t even spit up the bones of her. The hand in his feels wrong and small and dry, the pressure is different, not the reassuring way that Tallow would tug at his sleeve if she wanted him to go anywhere. He shouldn’t have left her there.
Swallow Anne leads him home and he follows, trusting- as he so often has to- that she knows better. But Swallow Anne is tiny, all wide eyed, little more than a scrap of a girl, a slim strip of paper that he can’t help but think that she has to feel as lost as he does. Lost without Tallow, without Noreen; her. Everything is getting confused in his head, making it hurt as he sinks into the earth outside of the pig arc and reaches out for a blade of straw to swirl between his fingers, but Swallow-Anne’s words pierce through the fog, rumbling through his chest as she keeps her head close.
It’s gonna be okay Bud. Ain't nothing gonna get Tallow, she's the strongest out of all of us.
And he knows then that Swallow Anne is as confused right now as he normally is. “She aint,” he says dully to the open sky. It isn’t a clear and vivid blue anymore as the fat storm clouds begin to swell.
His sister isn’t strongest. Anyone who’s seen her stagger on her knock-knees trying to carry a sack of pig feed or felt her slim, bony frame creep into their lap, barely a hundred pounds soaking wet or watched her curl into a ball and fiercely wipe away tears would know that. She’s weak and that’s what makes her brave. Tallow only pretends to be stronger than she is because she’s lonely.
And Scutcher left her in the middle of a burning world, had gotten so caught up in being there for Noreen like he promised that he’d forgotten about his sister. Perhaps he was wrong in wanting one of those perfect days that never ended, and this day would be the one to go on forever. Nothing but pain and sadness forever and forever.
“Where’s Tallow?” he demanded, pulling out from under Swallow Anne and craning his head back towards the road. “I don’t...she said...I should have..." his speech falls out of his mouth, garbled and senseless "where’s Tallow?” The tree branches parted in a breeze to reveal nothing; no lone, slim, figure trekking across the dirt, no whisper of her voice on the wind. She promised that she’d come back when she was done, but today everyone was leaving. He’s convinced that they’re going to kill her. Hadn’t he waited for Noreen to come home for so long now? His sister could be lying in the district square now with a great wound in her neck, asking him not to leave her while he’s so far away and once again, no one would let him say goodbye.
It’s hopeless. Scutcher is tired right through to the marrow of his bones. Pain stretches across the blades of his shoulders, his muscles marbled white and aching in a way that Scutcher couldn’t name even if he tried. The cells in his heart are dying.
He sinks into the mud again and pulls his knees up towards his chest, trying to bury himself into the darkness. Scutcher won’t wish his sister home because that didn’t work the first time, only shuts his eyes tight. He wants Tallow here, needs her like a kidney or one of his lungs and so he tries to picture her, what she would say, how she would soothe him because he knows she would. Burying his head underneath folded arms, Scutcher tries to block out this strange new world and feel Noreen on his right side and Tallow on his left.
