Storm Comin' [Sampson/Vasco]

Sampson Izar

Oh, if you keep reaching out

Then I'll keep coming back

And if you're gone for good

Then I'm okay with that

Sometimes I’m crawling out of my skin.

I wake up before the sun rises. First to light the kerosene and get the coffee bubbling, I watch the water boil black and tarry and ready to put hair on my chest. I call out to the other boys to wake up – though I guess, with thirty staring down at us, we aren’t much boys anymore – and shake open the curtains for the first sight of day. We’re six heathens, struck out on our own, a house of has-been ne’er do wells, boys that won’t ever be men. And not for lack of trying, but because we’ve seen what men can do.

That’s the curse of growing old. You forget what makes your heart beat, forget how to stare up at the sky and see a future among the stars. That there’s fire and passion that can burn through you, and pass on to others, yeah – we won’t ever get old. We won’t turn into men. Not the types that would settle down into a prison, pump out a child and play the cold and distant part we were born into. Would rather slit my wrists and pour salt over them than be caught up in that charade.

I start by adding water to the eggs I’ve cracked in a bowl and put the skillet over flame. I add the drops of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Sizzling on high heat, I turn the metal spatula in a figure eight like I’d seen my mother do. Before long the rest will rise and draw up to the little folding table we’ve decorated with odds and ends. I like to say we’re like the chairs that surround the table, gently used and missing polish, with scratches that line spots that should’ve been smoothed over.

They understand me better than anyone else ever did, I think.

Better than my father, who would call me stupid for pretending to be able to fly and running around as though I could soar through the air (the fuck is wrong with you, playing around all the time?). For not being man enough for him, when I started kissing boys or that my voice was a little too high. Little fits of youth that needed smoothing out, because the worse thing for a man like that was to see happiness in a child. I know where I get my anger from, at least.

Than my brother, who turned to drink and disappeared before he’d even left our house, acting like a ghost and fading out. Deval didn’t talk much after Benat’s death, and less after I came back from those years with Rum Tum. He blamed me for a lot of things, I think – things we all do as kids, when we’re too young to know what it meant to run away.

I didn’t know who I was then. Not that I much know who I am now, but the pieces feel like they fit together better. There’s still space between where missing parts are meant to go, but the picture’s starting to be clearer. A little bit of fire and flame, a little bit of passion, some hope, and maybe a bit of dreaming, too. I still look up at the night sky and search for Benat, now and again. Harder to remember what he looked like, but the memories aren’t gone. Not of someone who taught me how to feel, and not apologize for it.

I pull the eggs off the heat and let them stand. I take a cup of coffee out onto the little deck we have, set out from the dirt road, a good ways from the next farm over. There’s a little wicker chair set out to sit on, to watch the folks that would amble on toward the town center. This morning is hotter than others, already the humidity sets out across the horizon, and I know we’re going to be dripping with sweat before noontime.

Voices chatter from the other two bedrooms.

I relish the moments before the world comes alive. Not the lonely quiet, but the minutes before any of them would push open their doors with sleep in their eyes, when I could hear them stir. Because it was then I knew they were here with me, just behind the doors, ready to come out into the light of day. They’ll light up their cigarettes and complain about how they eggs are overdone. I’ll carry on about all the things that capitol has done, the trash that’s the games. They’ll roll their eyes and sigh, and let me go on – ain’t your uncle the mayor? – and then we’ll get all quiet and talk about how it’s another day pulling weeds and work under the hot sun.

Today though, I can’t shrug off the feeling that there’s something else I’m supposed to be doing. Lisle notices – he’s the skinny white one with blond hair, the one you wonder how he survives in this district burning like a tomato – that tells me I look twice as perturbed as usual. He asks if I’ve got another theory about what the capitol is doing against us (‘you going to tell us again about how the reapings is rigged or that the game makers play favorites?’ – he was fond of getting my shit all stirred up). But when I idle with the coffee cup in my hand, and stare out the window just a little too long, he asks if I need to clear out my head.

Just a bit, yeah.

I set out on a walk to nowhere. Toward the edge of the farm, out along the dust and into the heat as the sun rises. I walk for a good while, and let the restlessness take over. The walking toward nothing, a horizon that’s no different than it was the day before, I don’t even know what’s gotten down into me. But it’s enough that I keep pressing one boot in front of the other. Sometimes it comes in fits and spirts, the restlessness, as though whatever’s in my blood has to get used up. I don’t wave at the men or women that pass, but press further out along the gravel path, until the road starts to scatter to nothing. And I know I’m being pulled far from where I’m supposed to be – I’m missing a shift in the fields and will have to do double tomorrow – but I can’t stop, not even as the heat forces drops of sweat down my brow.

I get to the edge of the world and I stare, and I look, and I think about how this is the spot that sixteen some years ago, I made an escape out into the world unknown. Where I got to see what I wasn’t supposed to. Mountains and treetops, and old broken-down pieces of the past that are overgrown with tree limbs and ivy. I wonder about Rum Tum, my brother’s twin, and think about how if I hadn’t gotten sick, the two of us would’ve never come back here. It’s a story I like to tell when the world is quiet enough, and I feel like my shadow’s heavy on my shoulders. I told it to Lisle the night we spent together, a few months ago, sharing the same bed. He thought it was another one of my make-believes, and kissed me on the forehead when it was done (There’s no such thing as carousels, but it’s a nice dream, Sampson).

I put my hand to the fence and look out to the distance. There’s patches of trees and brush for a ways, but beyond that, if it hasn’t changed much, there’d be a river wide and deep, leading toward a set of hills. I close my eyes and swear that I can smell burning wood and meat over an open flame, as though I’m back out there again, and not chained in here.

Sampson?

My name comes across the wind and I squint, looking out into the brush.

Maybe my mind wanted to believe he was still here, waiting for me to push past the wall that stopped me, and never look back.

I don’t hear them come up behind me, hand still on the fence. They don’t want to warn me, I don’t think. It would’ve been too easy for them to give me a pass, to drag my ass back to the fields to work.

Instead, they bring down a baton to my back, and tell me not to resist. But they don’t stop hitting me, two of them, first their metal batons, and then their boots into my chest and back, until I’m coughing and tasting blood. One of them digs through my pocket and finds my ID and smiles, because he sees the name – Izar – and gives it all he has.

I lay on the ground when they pull my wrists behind my back and put the cuffs on. It’s not over, though, not before they give a last whack across my head, to help me see a scatter of stars.

*Light On, Maggie Rogers