We Wait for the Afterglow [Sampson]

We celebrated when the news came down.

There were the last moments when my heart pounded up and into my head watching the Rhodes boy and the girl from seven fix those last blows. Weren’t close, but close enough that we still didn’t speak, us bar full of nobodies watching them kill each other. The film spun and spun, metal can clicking while we heard them screaming and slicing into one another. Could have been just like all those years ago, way back when my cousin, or my brother tried their hand—but the thoughts only pressed my heart into my stomach, and I couldn’t speak no more than the men around me. Just wanted to be a part of it, to fill the electricity that came with another crown. To know that we was part of something better, that tonight we’d be part of victory; there was hope between his fingers and loss on her lips. Faith in his eyes and sadness in her heart. And then—the cheer that came up from ol’ Nick at the end of the bar, tears down that bearded ol’ mans face like he never seen anything so beautiful as a blood streaming out of some girl’s neck.

They started hollerin’ and the bell started ringing in the square. Lights went up and there were people out in the streets again, old women with their tired eyes in disbelief, grown men crying and hugging like their frail bodies was going to collapse into one another. And I stood in the warm December air just closing my eyes and listening. Maybe I’d had too much to drink. The colors swam together behind my eyes, but all I can think of is—back to those years ago, when his name was called, when my name was called, when my cousins—I hiccupped and pressed a hand against the side of the tavern wall. The celebration’s gonna go on for hours, build into days, all the happiness and joy exploding across the faces of people who just ache to have what little of it that they can get. Not that I want to fault them for it no more.

I got to get home.

But I’m not headin’ back to the little place I got with four other boys that pick out in the fields. We share a house we paper thin walls and rotted hardwood floors, but it’s a home that’s fair enough. You turn eighteen around here, and the world doesn’t stop getting bigger. One day you wake up and your name ain’t going in no bowl, just gets added to a roll of paper they run through in the fields. And my head burned when I knew that this was how I was going to live, a little shack and a world that was small—a place where I wouldn’t know outside the walls, wouldn’t see nothing like I’d gotten a chance to know. But then the days got longer, and the work got harder, and when I fell down on the ground in the sun, someone grabbed my arm and picked me back up again. I had thought the peacekeeper on the white horse was going to come over and drag me away, but no—just a face that knew it was going to be hard but that we could get through this.

I could get through this.

So what am I doing here tonight? Up on that hill, next to those trees, looking out on the river? Must have been—ten years? Has it been that long since he came and went? Just about this time that Benat’s birthday was coming, I weren’t even reaping age. And we counted the stars—oh, he used to count them stars—he would’ve loved to have been celebrating a boy coming home. I stop in my tracks, and stare out at the water. The moon sits heavy on the slow, thinning river. Be a few years before all this dries up and we got nothing left. Everything’s changing, and here I am thinking about what used to be. But that’s fair, ain’t it? Sometimes you can’t get going if you don’t get a good look at where you used to be. You may be gone but don’t mean that I can’t break my heart over you now and again, Benat.

I take a clump of tobacco between my fingers and start to roll a slice of paper. I used to get angry, so angry. Had a whole little shed full of fertilizer bombs I was gonna use to blow people away. Fuck them. Fuck all of them. ‘Cause chaos was better, would’ve made me feel better than the way I was. Could have been beautiful, a beautiful fucked up end to me and them. It’s a wonder I wasn’t killed—could’ve been easy for them to snuff out the rest of the Izars if they really wanted to. But here I am, stretched thin and still standing. Far enough from where I’ve been but nowhere to go next. And I’m back here, back to where I thought I could just live.

But my hands are shaking, and I got to take another drag. What’s it all mean, if this is the rest of our lives? Pulling at cotton in the fields, or strawberries in the patches, when we got so little to be happy about? But there’s people celebrating in the streets, and a boy’s coming back home to his family. And I got reasons to be happy, too. Enough that I shouldn’t never have to think about this place again. Fuck. But you’re a piece of me—this place always been a part of me that ain’t ever letting go. I spread my arms wide and take in the wind.

“Go ahead and give me a reason,” I pray to the stars, those beautiful stars, for the first time in years. “Don’t leave me waiting forever.” I drop my cigarette into the water with a hiss. “Please.”

HAYANA OF CAUTION 2.0