There Is No Year - Blake Butler [72]
From the mother’s throat, instead of voice now, up through her chest there came a key—another key that opened nothing—smooth teeth—each further word a key and key again, their metal raining from her mouth in exclamation to click against the ground—and in turn to turn to further birds there, bursting, one and another, a white excrement, alive—each bird flying right after the other straight up and head-on into the thickening awning of the sky.
The mother shouted at the awning, keys erupting, uncounted birds in muscled shriek. She needed to pull the awning down, she knew, and knew she knew she would not. The stink of skin coursed new all through the air just beneath the edge of air where the long sky grew, growing hair, a body, trust.
Among the birds, the mother screamed another name. Her nostrils made little rooms for sluicing, her throat skin rawing into blood. Her skin pocked with insects that poured out from her brain, born from other, tiny eggs. There were gnats and ants and bees and beetles. There were flies of every color. These too flew to become something—of the awning, and the ground. The mother could not count herself, the shake inside her. More insects settled on the air—insects both from her and in the world compiling. They made it hard to blink, or want. Each little tic of need and knowing begged so much thought. The mother—she could not—hardly—inhale—she could not—see. She pulled her outermost clothes up over around her head, a mask. She breathed into the scummy cloth. The mother reached for names she’d heard there, those women and those men. The mother reached.
INITIATE
The son heard the hall door open and saw someone standing in the hall. This time the son did not hide or close his eyes, though he could not see through them quite clearly. The room was fuzzed. The son’s arms were flexed as if for lifting. The figure in the hall stood unmoving for a long while. The son and the figure saw each other. The air around them seemed so empty it had no space. The son began to cough. The son could not move his head or hands and so instead hacked with his head back on the mattress, blooming germ-rind up above him. The son felt something metal in his mouth. The son coughed and coughed and spat a key. The key fell into the divot of his neck above the cell phone. The son’s chest began to twitch. The key was sinking. The son saw the figure had come forward slightly. He saw the figure had a gown—or not a gown but some large curtain—or not a curtain but a cape—or not a cape but something muddy, something thin and flat and woven. The son felt the ants burrowed inside him skitter through his lungs dry like a hive.
The window light swung through quick cycles as the son watched the form emerge. The light and dark of sun and absence swam back and forth accelerated. The lip of light moved up the wall in shafts like blinkers, exposing the crudded sections where the son had hung the crud of his achievements. Among the light the form moved closer. It came in inches. It made no sound. The son could still not see. Even as the wash of light moved across the form, the son could not make out anything about it. The form’s features were blurred or runny. The son blinked and blinked his eyes.
Sometimes between sets of blinking the son saw in the form’s place an upright furry rabbit—a very young girl—an older man in a ratty yellow shirt, so hunched he could not stand. The son saw older versions of himself—much older, already balding, multi-tattooed from head to foot, carrying a book. Each of these ideas, though, remained replaced by the progressing form each time the son would blink. The son could not keep his eyes apart from one another. The son could not feel his feet.
O
Over time the figure proceeded and the son began to learn