Read Online The Deadheart Shelters by Forrest Armstrong - Free Book Online Page B

out on the floor.
    Lilly walked in heavily-makeup’d. “Hello, boys.”
    “Hello, Lilly,” we all answered in unison. Mark muttered something that wasn’t meant to be understood. She sat on a stool and held her face like it would break if dropped, then stood up and opened the oven even though it was off.
    “What is it?” I asked. My voice was much fuller in the soap opera, because I knew what to say in advance.
    “Oh, I’m just worried about Clyde, that’s all.’
    “Always worried about somethin’. Pete, quit lookin’ away, it’s your turn.”
    “What’s wrong with Clyde?”
    “Oh, you know what he does. I’m worried that it won’t stop.”
    “Your turn, Pete.”
    I looked down and arbitrarily moved a checker from one spot to another. “It’ll stop, Lilly.”
    I got bored of thinking this. There’s a reason I just watch television, and that’s enough for me.
    The starkness of the collapsed coal mine came back to me. Dirt was having a nap on the floor, getting black.

Eventually he woke up, turning his head and blinking a lot then letting out a long sigh when he remembered where he’d fallen asleep. “It’s one of those things you think you might’ve dreamt,” he said. Sitting, he refused to look in the direction of the collapsed wall. He hummed tunelessly, stood up very briefly and sat.
    “Tell me about the slaves.”
    “Stop asking me that.”
    “We’re here for a while. Listen—there’s no sounds of them trying to rescue us. Like you said we could die. Just tell me.”
    “I don’t want to.”
    “Well then please talk. Say something.”
    I thought back but each day seemed coated with blurred plastic, so I could see nothing particular in them. Imagine if I told him, “The story of the day is always the same—I wake up and then I am here. Here, I get in a way of doing things that I don’t notice time elapsing. It’s like someone shaking me awake, how it ends.” It might have made it easier to leave. But instead I told him the only story I could remember.
    “I saw a man get hit by a car the other day. He had a phone pressed up against his ear with his shoulder and in his right hand he held a cigarette. I think that’s why it happened. One of those taxis was going too fast and he was just going too fast and suddenly he flew up and over the whole thing and right after he hit the ground, already, blood was rolling into the gutters.”
    “Did he die?”
    “I don’t know. He must have. He didn’t even twitch.”
    Dirt groaned. “That makes me feel better.”

In the soap opera we walked out on the back porch, me and Abe and some red wine. The afternoon poured into our glasses and poured out of them singing like trumpets faintly, as if the afternoon was separate from us by acres. Almost like memory. It was one of those moments I always wished I had and when I watch the kids fly kites it feels like I’m almost having it.
    “I’m going to pass soon,” Abe said. “You know that I’m going to pass soon?”
    “Die?”
    He laughed into his red wine. “Yes. Die. For good.”
    “Why are you saying that?”
    “Well I’m old, Pete. A man can only get so old before time shouts Enough!”
    I shook my head. “Let’s think of simpler things.”
    “That’s why I love you, Pete. You don’t let the rest get you. Look out, look at all of this,” he said, motioning to the land. The sun was laying its head upon the pillow of the mountains tiredly. The hills rolled like my hand rolled over Lilly’s undressed body ( stop ). In the heliotrope water the ostriches were waiting for the trout, and on the shore the pyramid was made out of dehydrated bones. The bulls stood with nothing to run at. There was more, much more; peach trees and the missions that animal go on, unbound to time, and creeks like our wine glasses; but in soap operas who notices these things? “It all belongs to you when I pass. You, not Mark—know why? Mark’s always thinking how bad things can get, and you never do.