Dying Light

Chapter 1

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Photo by Jorge Zapata on Unsplash

Do not go gentle into that goodnight, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

- Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that goodnight”

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You could make a window go frosty if you breathed on it hard. He didn’t know that. Not until the big freeze came. The only freeze of his young life until then.

“Whole damn planet’s warming up and here we are in Georgia. Freezing our tails off.”

It wasn’t really freezing. Just above according to the weatherman. But it was enough for his big mama to get the fireplace going and heat up hot chocolate. Like a gen-u-ine Christmas movie. 

“Why don’t you go out and play?”

He smooshed his finger against the cold glass and carved a circle, pressed his eye to the window bone deep and peered out beyond the patch of fog where his breath had mucked it up. The yard was overgrown. Tree branches reached halfway across the fence line and hung heavy and threatening.

“They’re liable to tip over if we get a bad storm in.”

His mother would say that sometimes when his father was reading. His father would nod his head but never raise so much as an eyebrow, his thoughts turned to the world on the pages.

“Did you hear me?”

He did hear her, but stayed silent. He was watching an orange and green blur, Billy and Hank wrestling in the grass. They didn’t look cold. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be. They were always playing bloody knuckles and slapsies, daring each other to hit harder. To make the other one bite his lip and hold back tears. Only sometimes neither of them did, and they slapped and slapped until their hands went numb and mama had to tell them to quit their nonsense and come inside.

“James.”

He pulled away from the glass. Looking at her would be futile. He knew the words before they came out of her mouth. His body went limp and slinked down the couch like a snake. He placed his hands just underneath his shoulders and made a show of crawling to the front door, his eyes on the ground but watchful in his peripheral for her reaction. 

She didn’t react, just moved a rag around on the counters in the kitchen and hummed. It wasn’t until he stomped outside and slammed the front door that he heard her yell his name. He smiled, happy that he made her notice him, and made his way to the grass. He kneeled down and looked at it. It glistened like it was wet, but when he touched it, it was hard and half frozen. He squeezed a single blade of it and heard it crackle. His fingers ached with the cold, and he stuffed his hands in his coat pockets while he watched the circle where the pads of his fingers had touched the green melt away. 

“Look who finally came out in the cold.”

It was Billy. He knew better than to look up at him. Better than to look him in the eyes. But he also knew that it was coming anyway. The beatdown. 

“Fucking fatso. Why would mom send you out here?”

He pinched the grass again, a little higher up this time. The blade was so sharp and so thin he glanced at his pointer and thumb to see if it had cut. But it hadn’t. The sting he felt was cold seeping into his skin. Hurting inside as well as out. 

Billy stepped forward, his legs lanky and long. He was always tall, but since puberty two years earlier, he had sprung up another foot and a half. His temper had quickened with his height. He had always been angry, but it was easier to set him off now. Even if you were quiet around him, made sure to stay out of his way and look at the floor to avoid him noticing you. It didn’t matter. 

He raised his foot and cocked it back, made like he was going to kick him. James flinched, waiting for the blow, but it didn’t come. When he opened his eyes again, Billy’s foot was hovering just at his shoulder. He flattened it so the toe was no longer pointed, and pushed James over with a hard shove, the cold sole of his shoe radiating frost through James’ arm.

“Pussy,” he spit, and turned to walk inside. 

Hank lingered for a minute with his hands in his pockets. James got the idea sometimes that he wanted to help him when Billy went off. But he couldn’t. Couldn’t go against the oldest, who reserved all his rage and vitriol for the littlest, fattest brother. James stayed where he was, laying on the cold ground, his ear pressed against the grass. It crackled and popped like cereal in milk. He could picture tiny rodent bones that would do the same if you snapped them. 

“Don’t stay out too long,” Hank murmured before walking inside with Billy. 

James laid like that for another twenty minutes, listening to the small, quiet world of grass and dirt and bugs. When his mother finally called him in, his right ear was red with cold. 

“What were you doing laying in the frost like that?” 

She held a hot compress to the side of his face. The stinging radiated from deep in his ear to his cheekbones, feeling spidering out into the numb skin.

“You know you can get frostbite, don’t you? Why would you do something so stupid?”

“Because he is stupid,” came Billy’s voice from the living room. 

“William,” his mother said sternly. She looked to the blue chair where his father was sitting, a paperback raised and his brows furrowed in concentration, then sighed. 

“Don’t do that again James, you hear me?”

He nodded and looked at her eyes. There was concern etched in the lines around them, and he noticed for the first time the sprout of greying hairs at her hairline, just above her ears. When she died there would be no one left in this world to love him. He flung his arms out suddenly and hugged her hard around her big middle, enough so that the breath went out of her. It took her a minute to lay her own heavy arms around his neck and back. She rested there, then patted him and sent him to take a bath to wash the cold out. 

He shared an upstairs bathroom with his brothers. It was small, the toilet plopped snuggly between the single vanity sink and tub. In the mornings he was usually last in line, and Billy would take long on purpose, just to make him hold it. He always let Hank in if he needed, would poke his head out and wink at James before motioning him in and slamming the door shut behind him. It got to so when James saw a light on under the door, he went back in his room and waited. 

Time went faster if he stayed out of Billy’s way. He was mulling this over as he walked up the stairs to the little cubby hole bathroom, taking each step slow and steady to keep the noise at bay. The wood beneath the carpet was rickety and he was heavy for his age. Big-boned was what his mother called it. Lard-ass was the term Billy preferred. If Billy heard the steady creak, creaking, he would pounce on him like a jungle cat. 

To escape it, James would have to take his time. Blend in and breathe through his movements. Get to the bathroom without being seen so he could lock the door behind him. Even with that Billy could get in if he wanted. He had done it before with a butter knife. Popped the latch as easy as anything. But only one time, when their parents were out Christmas shopping. Never with one, let alone both of them, downstairs to hear James holler. 

When he made it to the little landing, that limbo between floors, he stopped. Light spilled out in a strip from under the bathroom door. It glowed radioactive, acid yellow in the dark hallway. If he was lucky it would be Hank in there. Hank liked to do his hair. Liked to smell good even though he was only twelve. Sometimes he used Billy’s razor, even though there wasn’t enough hair there to shave. Not really. 

James looked without looking, examined his surroundings from his periphery to make sure Billy wasn’t hiding out somewhere watching. He listened. The faucet was running. Whoever it was, they were finishing up. Washing their hands and about to exit. Then it would be his turn. He would wait it out downstairs. Sit with his mom in the kitchen until Hank and Bill came down and left, or plopped on the couch to watch TV. Yeah. That was the way.

He turned his back to the door. A mistake. A big one. The Don’t Do This If You Want To Make It Out Alive one. It’s true of all big cats, but he knew it from stories about mountain lions. You never turn your back. If you want to live, they need to see your eyes. Once you’re distracted, you’re vulnerable. He thought he was being careful, locked in strategic thought about how to get into the bath and avoid a spanking without running into his big brother Billy. But his concentration was the distraction. His thoughts were the weakness. 

Billy had him off his feet before he stepped on the first stair, one strong, thin arm woven from sinew and roped muscle grabbed around his middle. The other arm flew to his face and mashed his hand against his mouth and nose. James’ lips were smooshed against his teeth, his mouth open and struggling to scream, pulling in the salty pink of Billy’s palm with every attempted breath. No air got through. None. His legs started to kick out the way they did when he held his breath too long at the pool, the last fight to escape and live. When Bill felt that, he pressed harder, mashing James’ nose down, bending the cartilage in towards his brain. 

James arched his back as Billy carried him backwards and struggling, up the stairs. The yellow light enveloped them, spilled out for a moment onto brown carpet, then disappeared behind the dark plywood door. Bill let go of his middle and clicked the lock shut. 

“I thought mom told you to take a bath you fat little prick.”

His arm was back around his middle, hugging tighter than ever, pushing the air out of him from one end while holding his mouth shut from the other. Little orange sparks of light appeared and floated in the middle of his vignetted vision. The world was burning around the edges. Billy was killing him, right here in the bathroom. He was only eight years old, and this was the last thing he was going to know of the world. The vague smell of shit and the taste of Billy’s sweat. And his blood like a penny on his tongue. Like a new, pretty penny. 

He had just drifted, shifted into unconsciousness, when Bill dropped him to the floor. Then he was back, heaving and gasping. Shuttering on his side, a tiny warm trail of bubbling spit and pink blood pouring onto the linoleum floor. Bill wasn’t laughing. He was staring down. His muscles were pumped from exertion. A blue vein rippled in the crook of his elbow. His dark hair hung stringy in front of his eyes. 

He bent forward. James tucked into a fetal position beneath his shadow, readying his body for impact. Instead, he heard metal squeak, a flood of water pouring into the tub. The pipes rumbled beneath his aching red ear, warm but burnt from the cold. When Bill pulled back, he looked up to the ceiling. Wisps of vapor moved ghostlike, rising before hitting the popcorn and disappearing. James knew the wisps would gather there in droplets. He would have to keep the door open after or there would be trouble with mama. 

“I don’t want mold in my house boys. You air it out after you bathe, you hear me?”

The mirror fogged up too. He couldn’t make out the back of Billy’s head in the clouded glass. Just a shadow. He pushed up slowly, first onto elbows, then into a sitting position. His eyes were level with the rim of the open toilet. The smell of piss wafted on the wet air, carried by the quickening clouds of steam. If you needed to puke and couldn’t, that smell would do it. He looked to his right and saw that the tub was filling, near the halfway mark already. The water was gushing out hot, immediately wicking away into fog as soon as it hit the silver faucet head. 

“Bill,” he croaked out, his throat dry and hurting.

He didn’t look at him. The tears were already bubbling out of his eyes and streaming down his chin. He leaned his forehead against his knees and dug his leaking eye sockets into the bones. He cried without making noise, trying to make himself still. To make Bill take all this back. 

Bill’s shadow fell over him, darkening the linoleum underneath his hands. He heard the creak of the faucet turning again, and the burbling water stopped. Fat water droplets fell in rhythm. Drip, drip. Steam sizzled quiet static, the kind you can barely hear. But James heard it. Understood what it meant before the next thing happened. 

“Get in the bath James.”

James shook his head a little. No. But Billy wouldn’t take no for an answer. His hands rushed forward, were on the hem of his red sweater, yanking it up, exposing James’ round belly. Sometimes after mama read him a story, she would blow raspberries on the soft pink of it and poke the skin just under his ribs until he laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe. He could picture his white skin streaked with red now, rubbed raw from the motion of Billy pulling up and up, trying to get it over his arms and head. 

But he couldn’t. James kept his elbows bent and his chin tucked. Bill was shaking him, almost lifting him off the ground with the effort but he still couldn’t get it off. Years later, James would look back and be proud of that. That he held him off for a minute, even if he couldn’t stop him.

Billy turned suddenly, his back to James, his legs straddling him as he pulled his sweatpants off effortlessly. James tried to turn his feet, to pull his toes towards his shins and stop Bill from getting them, but it didn’t work. He had no leverage from this angle, and Billy had the advantage of surprise. 

He stood straight, breathing heavy from the effort. He stared down at James’ legs, pale and chubby above the knees. His eyes wandered to his underwear and he laughed.

“Jesus James. Even at eight years old I was twice the size of you.”

James tried to push his hands down to cup his groin and cover himself. He couldn’t reach beyond Bill’s squatted stance. He tried to pull his legs in, but Billy grabbed him by his right ankle and held hard. 

“Not so fast fatso. You got to get warmed up. Remember?”

And just like that James was naked in all the ways that mattered. Billy didn’t bother taking the sweater off. Instead he turned and stepped to one side of James. He hooked one arm under his knees, the other behind his neck. He held him like a father carrying a sleeping child to bed.

They stood like that for a minute, suspended in the moment. James met Billy’s eyes for the first time. They were black like an animal’s, the color gone out of them. He held James out over the water, a smile twisting his lips. James didn’t cry, not even when Bill’s arms retracted inward like legs when you smash them. His own arms whirled in circles, willing his body to sprout wings and carry him up, up.

When he hit the water, he felt the world empty. For a moment there was no sound. His thoughts conjoined, singled in on the purity of pain. He emerged headfirst from a baptism of fire. The water stung like acid, his skin crawling with heat that went to the bone. Bill stood looking at him, eyes wide. The color was back in them again, his mouth hanging open like his jaw had been knocked loose.

The sound of his scream scared him, hit his ears as if from some other world. It came out against his will, pushed out of his body by pain. His skin felt like it was tightening into a freakish wetsuit, pulling and stinging as he hollered. His mama was in the doorway then, saucer eyes staring before she ran to him. Daddy was just behind her, finally pulled away from his book and blinking.

“What did you do!”

Bill’s hands were held loose, his palms turned up to heaven. He stared at the water blankly.

“I didn’t know—”

Mama pushed past him and grabbed James hard, pulling him out by his armpits. He screamed when she did. She laid him on the ground, eyes wide and frantic.

“Get me a towel!”

No one moved when she said it. They were all watching as James’ red skin started to bubble. Blisters formed around his ears and neck. His legs were breaking out in them. When the ambulance came, the paramedics had to drag mama out of the bathroom. Hank helped hold her up to keep her from collapsing. Billy stood stupidly, looking at his hands.

“I didn’t know it could get that hot.”

When they cut the sweater away at the hospital, swaths of skin came with it. Melted off and clinging to red wool. Beneath his armpits where mama had grabbed him, the skin was worn down to the muscle.

That night, a nurse would whisper that his mother shouldn’t have carried him out like that. That was why the skin had stuck to the knit the way it had. She had grabbed him too hard. The other would turn and look at James before whispering that it wasn’t her fault. After all, he was such a heavy boy.