A bird was singing. Then it stopped. The treetops bent slightly under a wind, and when the wind passed the treetops stilled. The young man watched the effect the wind had upon the grass and thought it strange that the color seemed so unfamiliar despite his seeing it every day.
In his good hand he held a pencil, and on the table beside him laid a sketchbook he had bought earlier in the day. His other hand was covered in bandages that the nurse had wrapped for him. She was a young nurse and he had imagined her without her clothes as she’d spoken to him and asked why he’d done what he did, and he had not answered. She asked once more in a mocking but amicable tone what he had been thinking, and he ignored her, and then she knew. She did not speak again until she’d finished wrapping the wound, and only to tell him it was finished. The bird that had been singing left its branch and flew away.
He wore jogging shorts and a sleeveless shirt that allowed the warmth to hit much of him, and his skin was dark from long days spent outside, riding his bike or swimming at the pool. He had done these activities alone and would leave the pool if someone else entered, quietly and without making a show of his annoyance.
On his left leg a large cut ran down from knee to ankle like a thick ripple under his skin. He had been pedaling as fast as he was able to on his bike, rolling downhill unaware of a coming speed bump, and when he had hit the bump the bike catapulted into the air, turning sideways and dragging him underneath as both scraped against the pavement and toppled over each other in a mesh of human and iron. He had lain in the road only long enough to inure himself to the burning on his side, and once ready he stood and limped his way home, holding his elbow to cup the blood that slimed through his fingers as more sloughed from his knee down his calve onto his sock. At home his mother and father opened their mouths to say one thing but ended, after a hesitation, on something else. His reply was “Fuck the fucking bike” and he had gone up the stairs and ran a bath.
With his good hand he grabbed the sketchbook off the table and laid it in his lap then flipped it open. He took a pencil from his pocket. He studied the grass and the way the wind had altered its color and shape, and then began to sketch in the trees and clouds and surrounding homes to provide an outline for what most occupied him. Soon he was finished. From his pocket he retrieved a picture of a little girl with light curly hair and rosy cheeks and a flat nose looking too small for her face but adorable all the same.
He began to draw the little girl. The face, provided through the small photograph, came easy, but he struggled trying to draw the body. He began, erased and began again. This pattern continued until the space reserved for her was dark with pencil smears and eraser, and despite the blemish now on his otherwise excellent drawing he persisted trying to create the body from memory, and each time failed, and each time became angrier and more intent on not failing. His good hand ached and sweat formed on his brow. He couldn’t do it.
“God dammit!” he screamed and threw the sketchbook and pencil. The pencil ricocheted off the deck onto the grass and disappeared. The sketchbook lay spread-faced. “God dammit. God dammit.” He dropped his head into both his hands and rocked in his chair and soon was crying.
His mother appeared around the corner from the front of the house, where the sound of movers loading boxes onto trucks still persisted despite his voice having traveled through the neighborhood. He did not see or hear her come.
She said his name and he did not answer her. He sat still within the chair, holding his head, his free hand and the hand with which he had shattered his bedroom window days before. To her left the young man’s mother saw her husband approaching, a fear and weariness in his eyes, and she went to him instead. She whispered something into his ear, and he whispered something back, and she looked to the corner that led to her son, said something else, and then, losing her composure, fell against her husband’s chest and wept. He held her and kissed the top of her head and closed his eyes. His own tears eventually came.
Still in the chair, the young man held between his head and hands the picture of his little sister, whose body, after two months, had finally been found. A fisherman and his son had found it in the river while on one of their weekly trips.
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